This shouldn't even be an issue, I imagine, but Neverwinter Nights 1 seems to overheat my nVidia 9600 gt.

I run many games without overheating, and I'm running this in an 800x600 window. My internal resolution isn't disgustingly high, either, so I don't know what the problem could be.

Issues like that can come up in games for weird reasons. I seem to remember StarCraft 2's between mission sections did some wonky stuff to video cards until they fixed it after launch. You'd probably have a better shot getting help from nVidia on settings you can change to maybe throttle it when playing that game.

I don't know if this is the case with NWN1, but I do remember that NWN2 had a real problem with multi-core computers. You could try alt-tabbing out and setting the affinity to a single core and see if that does anything (assuming you have a multi-core comp). Also, try forcing VSync on from the control panel for your graphics card.

I've never really had much of an issue with NWN1 with modern cards--if anything it runs cooler than most games I own. In any case, if you are having troubles, what I would do is the following:

1) Play around with the Vsync setting in-game and monitor the temperatures. Vsync is supposedly supposed to match the refresh rate of your game to your monitor, and turning it on may possibly help the heat issue by reducing the amount of frames per second your card is generating.
2) Play around with the Sparkly Water setting. I normally keep this off since I have an ATI card, and it looks kind of weird anyway. I used to have an old laptop running NWN with an nvidia chip and the sparkly water thing did seem to increase the load on the GPU.
3) On a 9600 GT, I would bump the resolution up to your native monitor resolution. Do it and see if it affects your temperatures.
4) If all else fails, try cleaning your graphics card fan with some compressed air.

Oh and, if you don't already use this, google and download HWMonitor to monitor your temperatures.

I use Speccy, actually, but I'll try HWmonitor


I'll try these suggestions, though, thanks!